Enter the Great Stupid Contest: Jews v Mormons

Jews Mormons

Baptism Dead People

Mormons: We are stupider – and somewhat desperate to add to our numbers.

Jews: Anne Frank was a Mormon – took just 70 years to figure that out

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In proxy baptism, a living Mormon immerses himself or herself in a baptismal font on behalf of a dead person. A church spokesman, Michael Otterson, said Friday that the ritual was done in the spirit of love, and that people’s souls were free not to become Mormons.

A Twist on Posthumous Baptisms Leaves Jews Miffed at Mormon Rite

“When you hear that your zayde, who died in Auschwitz, has become a Mormon, well, baruch ha-shem!” — blessed be God! — “that’s just what he always wanted.”

It was Thursday morning, and Moshe Waldoks, rabbi of Temple Beth Zion, in Brookline, Mass., was reacting to the news that at least one Mormon was still baptizing Holocaust victims. He was joking, of course, as one might expect from a co-editor of “The Big Book of Jewish Humor.” Rabbi Waldoks hastened to add that his zayde, or grandfather, had never heard of Mormons.

Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints promised in 1995 to stop including Holocaust victims in its ritual, the church admitted last week that Anne Frankhad been “baptized” in a Mormon church in the Dominican Republic. On Wednesday, The Boston Globereported that Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002, was baptized last June in Twin Falls, Idaho; Mr. Pearl was Jewish.

Also on Wednesday, the church released a letterreiterating its policy that “without exception, church members must not submit for proxy temple ordinances any names from unauthorized groups, such as celebrities and Jewish Holocaust victims.”

In proxy baptism, a living Mormon immerses himself or herself in a baptismal font on behalf of a dead person. A church spokesman, Michael Otterson, said Friday that the ritual was done in the spirit of love, and that people’s souls were free not to become Mormons.

“The sentiment is one of inclusiveness and reaching out, that God loves all his children,” Mr. Otterson said. “We make this offering to them, and they have the agency in the next life to accept or reject the offering.”

Church policy is that people baptize only their own dead relatives, hence the baptism of Anne Frank and Mr. Pearl both violated church policy. According to Mr. Otterson, the Mormon who baptized Anne Frank intentionally misused the church’s Internet-based software.

“With Anne Frank,” Mr. Otterson said, “this person tried to enter the name, found it was rejected, then created a duplicate record and falsified information to submit the record. And our system didn’t catch it.”

He said the perpetrator’s account had been suspended.

Even for the light-hearted Rabbi Waldoks, however, such explanations may be little consolation. Jews do not believe that baptism has any religious significance — it’s just water — but the Mormon practice leaves many Jews feeling disrespected.

“It smacks,” Rabbi Waldoks said, “of a certain sense of proselytism: If you can’t get them while they’re alive, you’ll get them while they’re dead.”

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Daniel Pearl, a reporter slain in 2002, had also been baptized.CreditAgence France-Presse — Getty Images

Laura A. Baum, an Ohio rabbi who runs OurJewishCommunity.org, an online community, said that even though proxy baptism did not actually accomplish anything, it still had the power to offend.

“It’s important to say that in some ways it’s meaningless,” Rabbi Baum said. “But it’s also religiously arrogant. I think words matter. Their doing their rituals could be insulting to the families of people whose relatives are being baptized. In the case of people who died during the Holocaust, they were killed because of their religious identity, and now another group is confusing the story.”

Jana Riess, a Mormon journalist, wrote on a blog for the Religious News Service last week that the practice was highly unregulated. When she submitted names for proxy baptism to a church database, in 1994, Ms. Riess expected that before she went to a temple to perform the baptisms, somebody would make sure the names were of her actual ancestors. But nobody did.

“For such a hierarchical organization, the church’s approach to temple work was highly individualistic, even laissez faire,” Ms. Riess wrote.

Mr. Otterson, the church spokesman, said that security had improved since then, and that the church was always fine-tuning its software to prevent abuses.

But no matter what promises the Mormon church makes, it is impossible to ensure that your Jewish grandfather is not baptized — or, for that matter, your Muslim aunt, or Clara Barton, or the late Yankees catcher Thurman Munson. Or George Plimpton.

Anthony Hecht, the chief technology officer for The Stranger, a weekly newspaper in Seattle, decided to fight back by offering conversions to dead Mormons — not to a new religion, but to homosexuality. Last week, he started the Web site AllDeadMormonsAreNowGay.com.

“Sadly, many Mormons throughout history have died without having known the joys of homosexuality,” the site reads. “With your help, these poor souls can be saved. Simply enter the name of your favorite dead Mormon in the form below and click ‘Convert’! Presto, they’re gay for eternity. There is no undo.”

If you like, AllDeadMormonsAreNowGay.com will select a Mormon for you to convert. In several recent attempts, the “Choose-a-Mormon” function spewed back names like “Steven Perry,” “Shirley McFly” and, due to an apparent bug, “undefined Russell.”

Mr. Hecht, who is half-Jewish and not gay, said the site had had about 600,000 unique visitors.

Asher Lopatin, a prominent Orthodox rabbi in Chicago, said that Mormons and Jews alike had to be sensitive to people of other faiths.

“It’s a lot like Palestinians crossing into Israel,” Rabbi Lopatin said. “I used to always say, ‘Look, so they have to wait another hour at the checkpoint, what’s the big deal?’ But the point is it offends them, and you have to take people’s feelings seriously.”

Nobody offered a more succinct version of this point than Rabbi Baum.

“I don’t want to give any credence to anyone who thinks baptizing us matters,” she said. “On the other hand, I don’t think it’s nice.”